the heart of a reformer

 (This was my homily from Friday at the ISBF meeting in Bengaluru.)

Most of the Church remembers St. Peter Damian as the bishop, a cardinal, a reformer. But he was first and foremost a monk. As a matter of fact, we Camaldolese claim him as one of the greatest saints of our congregation, mainly because he was the biographer of our founder St. Romuald, and his monastery at Fonte Avellana in the Marche region of Italy is one of the crown jewels of our congregation. Peter Damian was a major proponent of the eremitical life, though the congregation that he headed was in large part cenobitic as well. But he is mainly known in the rest of the Church for his work in greater ecclesial reform. One author wrote that he was one of the outstanding personalities of the 11th century, if not the entire Middle Ages. He was much sought after for advice by a series of popes, and eventually named bishop of Ostia and then a Cardinal. That’s when he got involved in protecting the rights of the church against secular corruption and in the reform of the secular clergy and the episcopacy.

    When I think of someone like Peter Damian, I can’t help but wonder: what is it that fires the heart of a reformer? If it’s just someone who has a personal agenda, the reform is going to go nowhere. St. Francis of Assisi wouldn’t have lasted; our St. Romuald wouldn’t have lasted; the Cistercian abbots wouldn’t have lasted if their reform was only their personal agendas at work. Like Saint Peter Damian, the true reformer’s zeal always has to be rooted in personal conversion—as today’s gospel tell us (Mk 8:34-9:1) everyone has to take up their cross and follow Jesus—and the reform grows from out of that. It’s an organic thing. If we try to orchestrate it, it’s destined to fail. St. Francis heard the call: “Rebuild my church.” But that was based on him rebuilding Francis first. 

            This is the lesson we have to learn from Peter Damian––not to go out and reform, but to go in and reform. His first movement was there––to the inner journey, to the inner work, to what we in the monastic tradition call conversatio. The thing is, if we do this work of conversatio, we never know where the Spirit is going to take us, what the Spirit is going to do with us when we have been molded into what Spirit wants us to be. We might be sent to evangelize! We might be sent to our deaths! We might get asked to push a cart and be a chai wallah in downtown Bangalore. And we might be called simply to stay home in our cell and sit waiting, patiently, content with the grace of God. 

But that’s not our business. Our business, again as today's gospel tells us, is to lose our lives for the sake of the gospel. Our business is to be clay in the hands of this God, to reform our lives continually and make ourselves available to the Spirit. We have in our congregations what is known as the triplex bonum, the threefold good of solitude, community and this third thing that we don’t like to name, but originally it was missionary martyrdom. We like to think of it as some kind of absolute availability to the Spirit, losing your life for the sake of Christ and the gospel. Whatever we do even in terms of our own inner healing and growth, what we do in terms of personal conversion itself, is a gift to the Body, making ourselves an instrument for the Spirit. 

Peter Damian himself wrote to a hermit-recluse at Sitria, in what I think of as the most eloquent defense of the eremitical life and the contemplative life in general, “The Church of Christ is united in all her parts by such a bond of love that her several members form a single body and in each one the whole church is present.” (I, by the way, used that for my ordination announcement.) So it goes both ways: what goes on in us is also important to the whole Body; on the other hand what goes on in the Body is important to us. If we are living true to our vocations, if we have really died to the world, then not only do we have a gift to offer the rest of the church––we become the gift that we offer to the rest of the Body.

So let’s pray for that ourselves, that we might take up our cross and follow Jesus, that we may lose our lives for the sake of the gospel, for the fresh new way of thinking that comes from our experience of union with God through contemplation, prayer and meditation, and the energy to embody it and enact it, so as to be a gift to the whole Body of Christ in the bond of love.

a common word

Feb 20-22, Asirvanam, Bengaluru

 

I was to preach in the morning Friday, the last day of the meeting, and my talk was to be the very last conference on the very last day, at 3 that afternoon. I wanted to open and close the talk with a song, as is my wont. But this time I had decided to try traveling without having to check any baggage, so I wrote ahead and asked if I could possibly borrow a guitar while I was here. I got an enthusiastic response back, Yes! I knew I was taking a chance, but, hey… So the prior Fr. Jerome did scrounge me up a guitar. It was small (smaller than my Taylor mini SG) but at first strum it seemed adequate for two songs. But then the ebullient prior decided that I should do a concert on Tuesday night. In any other circumstance with my own guitar I would have said absolutely yes, but the guitar was really bad, just this side of a toy, and the low E string was totally out of tune after the second fret. Everything else on the higher frets was pretty bad too but I could have found ways around that. But he insisted and then he announced it to great applause. Humility. I spent most of the day practicing, meaning trying to find ways to play around the tuning problems and picking songs that were not going to be a problem, trying to rely more on the voice than on guitar pyrotechnics. Long story short, when the time came ‘round, I was ready for the humiliation of it all but felt I could pull something halfway decent off. Dorathick told me of an old Tamil proverb that a skilled craftsman could turn a blade of grass into a tool. And so… 

As fate would have it, some of the young guys who were helping to set up were surprised at what I was playing on and told me that there were better guitars around. Five minutes before the “concert.” And one of them set off looking for it. So I launched in on the toy and pulled off a pretty decent version of “Circle Song” to wild applause. Just as I was finishing that song the chap showed up with  another guitar, much better. It had heavy gauge strings (I use extra light) but the sound and the tuning were a world apart. I had decided to do two poems ("Circle Song" and "Awakening"), two liturgical pieces ("Streams of Living Water" and "Unless a Grain of Wheat") and two interreligious pieces ("Lead Me" and "The Ground We Share"). It was a smash hit with everyone, especially there young pre-postulants who are finishing their schooling, maybe 18-21 years old. The admiration and appreciation on their faces was very moving. Some of them do not yet speak English well and just stood there stammering but you could read it in their eyes.

 

But before that… As I finished, singing a soft nama japa from Shantivanam (Hare Yeshu) with the crowd to close the night, Prior James then invited an American girl from New Jersey who is here to teach English to come up and sing some more songs in English. She spoke very indistinctly into the microphone and told everyone that she didn’t really know much music and she wasn’t very good but she had learned a couple of sea chanties. She then balanced her smartphone on her knee and played Rory Cooney’s “Canticle of the Turning.” She had to stop occasionally to scroll the lyrics. She then launched into a rendition of “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald,” a very long song with so many words that I can’t imagine anyone understood. It was bizarre. Then the prior invited Sr. Lynn, also from the US, who is the head of Communio Internationalis Benedictinarum, the women’s version of the Benedictine Confederation, to sing something. She wisely decided to lead the crowd in the Salve Regina and call it a night.

 

Anyway, aside from the post-performance additions, it was a real success of a night, and reminded me yet again of how the addition of music changes everything. And yes: from now on I always being my guitar.

 

Thursday was an outing for the rest of the group and I had orchestrated going for another visit to Jyoti Sahi and his wife Jane, but this time I wanted him to meet Dorathick and Jyoti wanted to meet him. Not much to add to what I wrote about my encounter with them last March: Jyoti as always a fountain of wisdom and experience, and Jane the model of hospitality. I am quite inspired that Jyoti is still painting every day and still reading copiously. As a matter of fact he showed me his well marked-up copy of Rediscovering the Divine which he said he found “helpful.” His knowledge of Indian culture is astounding, and he writes in a  very scholarly way himself. Dorathick as always shows himself to be an even deeper well than he appears at first in terms of the breadth of his knowledge and his ability to articulate complex things in a straightforward way. He actually has just self-published his first book and gave it to Jyoti, on The Cosmic Christ.

 

Friday was rougher and I almost don’t know if I can write about it. Just the facts.

 

I preached in the morning. The odd thing was when I showed up for morning prayer at 6 AM (Mass was at 7), there was hardly anyone there outside of the young monks of Asirvanam. None of the participants in this meeting! They had had their outing to Mysore yesterday, a three-hour drive. I thought that they were just going to visit our Camaldolese nuns there, but they also added in a trip to the famous palace and something else, and didn’t get home until 1:30 AM. So the prior had told them to skip morning prayer. Those that dragged themselves into 7 AM Mass (certainly not all the men) looked like something the cat dragged in (as Mom used to say).

 

I blame it on the fact that I am a born performer (not entertainer, mind you) and a communicator, but I work so hard on even little events like this. I get five maybe ten minutes to say something to an important group of people––not important like VIPS, important like nuns and monks, superiors, from Sri Lanka and India––and I want to make the absolute most of it. It was the feast of “our” St. Peter Damian and I had adapted an old homily from a few years back on “the heart of a reformer.” (Maybe I’ll clean it up and post it too.) That morning at about 5 AM I cut out half of it. (Do you know the old saying, “If I had had more time I would have written less”?) Presiding at Eucharist in a new place is somewhat awkward anyway, but here they have a certain way of wearing the priestly garb, and certain seating arrangement, etc etc. But it went really well.

 

But then I was told that my afternoon session was going to be shifted to a third morning session: one at 9, one at 10:30, and me at 12, because so many people were going to leave at lunch. That sounded like a long morning on the last day for something the cat dragged in but I said, okay, no problem. I spent hours and hours on this particular talk, overshooting the intellectual level by a good bit. I had already slashed about a third of my 14-page outline, and that morning I slashed another two pages (with footnotes). I also had a PowerPoint. To be fair, I want this to be the basis of my regular talk at monasteries around the world, and perhaps also to make an article of it. (This I will also post at some point on the DIMMID website.)

 

However… the speaker before me was a diocesan priest from Kerala named Fr. Anthony Tharekkadavil. He is a biblicist and a professor in the seminary. As a matter of fact several of the young monks from Kerala studied under him and are very much under his sway. He also told me, later, that he is an apologist. His topics were supposed to be “Living in a multi-religious context in India today” and “World Peace multi-religious perspective.” But in reality both of his presentations were entirely devoted to being vehemently anti-Islam. I am not slandering him by saying this. This was a public presentation, and he is very proud of it.

 

I’m sure all of this has to be nuanced, but I took copious notes. I wish I could have a copy of his slide show and videos. It was very detailed. It started out beautifully tracing biblical history. But the points that all that led to were:

 

We do not worship the same God as Muslims (YHWH is not Allah).

 

Islam is a false religion (like some others)

 

He bases his thinking on Cardinal Ratzinger’s Dominus Iesus, not on Lumen Gentium or Nostra Aetate because those latter two contradict the Credo.

“You cannot be friends with a Muslim” (that was the exact title on one of his slides) because they will eventually turn on you out of obedience to the Qur’an.

 

He kept referring to “them” and “they” as if all Muslims were like this, and then played clip after clip of extremism Islamist preachers who contradict the Bible, and evangelical preachers preaching against Islam. Also a clip of someone reading from the writings of Don Bosco in which he describes how absurd Islam is.

 

He also listed all the ways that Islam says that Christianity and the Bible are wrong. That is fair enough. I think that is worth a hard conversation. How and when and in what tone is up for debate.

He played a clip of a Lebanese woman evangelical preaching about how Lebanon was ruined by the Muslims and harmed even more by the influx of Palestinian refugees, and quoted a Swedish report saying how the migration of Muslims is destroying Sweden. He listed terrorist attacks around the world so as to say “This is what happens when you let Muslims into your society.”

 

He kept saying his main point was that “the only way to real peace is evangelization,” and by evangelization he meant proclaiming Jesus as Lord and converting people. I suppose this might have been his attempt at addressing his assigned topic, "world peace from a multi-religious perspective." 

 

Also Donald Trump, who I think of as anti-Christ if not the anti-Christ, is a great Christian leader because he is protecting Christianity. (It begs the question, as I heard a marvelous Black pastor say on YouTube the other day, “Whose Christianity?”!) That was the cherry on the icing on the cake and it was all I could do to stay in my seat and stay silent.

 

I will not go into my rebuttals of any of this. It’s all so complicated. But at the end of the first session I was literally having heart palpitations with… anger? Frustration? Helplessness? Grief? He was very good, very convincing, fiery. The young guys from Kerala especially seemed to be eating it up.

 

We ran into each other in the corridor between the first and second session and exchanged some pointed (maybe even harsh) words. I started out by saying, “You have ruined my entire talk. You have cut the legs out from my argument based on the Church’s official teaching,” especially about him dismissing Vatican II, which he doubled down on. (The Vatican Dicastery has experts on Islam and they would never never never speak in this way.) He kept saying, “I’m an apologist” as if that justified his tone. (It came to my mind that there are those who doubt whether apologetics actually is evangelization but that is another question.) I finally was able to stammer out, “What do you want them to walk away with from your session? Fear? Anger? Hatred? Violence?” These are people who living cheek to jowl with Muslims. He is from Kerala and there have been violent acts Muslims against Christians, I understand.  Rightly to be concerned, but what is the proper Christian response? “You cannot be friends with a Muslim.” And evangelize using the social media.

 

Thanks be to God I did not engage him anymore, especially not publicly. My Sicilian was up and I would have spouted stupidaggine. I seriously contemplated not giving my talk at all. I sat through the second session taking copious notes and looking over my own upcoming talk. There was nothing I was going to say that was directly related to what he was saying––I was afraid there would have been pushback about Hinduism!—though I was going to be quoting Popes Paul VI and John Paul II, Vatican II and all the documents of the Vatican Dicastery over and over again.

 

I started out singing a cappella a little bit of the new song, “People of the Book (Let Us Come to a Common Word),” which begins with the Arabic verse from the Qur’an and then: “People of the Book, let us come to a common word: that God is love and those who abide in love abide in God and God in them.” The only time I mentioned his talk was to say, as I was quoting Nostra Aetate, that I did not agree with Fr. Anthony that this was against the Credo. When I got to the part about studying texts of other traditions I also said that I agreed with him that we should study our own and others’ texts before we speak. It’s all in the talk. I also said at one point, “You don’t need peacemakers where there are no wars. Just like we wouldn’t need interreligious dialogue if we were all getting along harmoniously. That’s why we do it.” In the name of Jesus.

 

My question to him, which I was only able to formulate later in my mind, was “What if half this crowd were Muslims, how would you have addressed these issues? They are all worthy of the ‘hard conversation’ but how would you have tried to win them over? By making fun of them? By calling out the worst extremes of their tradition? By brow beating them intellectually (the same thing that some imams are doing with the Scriptures)?” And “dialogue is evangelization, showing the best face of Christ and the Church.”

 

Anyway, once I took a deep breath, my talk went well, and I made a point later of stopping to speak with Fr. Antony in front of everyone in the refectory, very civilly, wishing him peace. I also asked him if he had anything written in English (most of this stuff on this is in Malayalam), mainly because I have a lot of homework to do and his work would be good material. He said no, because there were several other priests doing this work better than him and they had written a lot. Sigh. But I guess all I have to type into Google is “Why Islam is a false religion” and plenty will come up. I can’t imagine the Holy Father or the Dicastery ever ever ever using inflammatory language like that.

 

It was only later that I realized again that Fr. Anthony never touched his topics— “Living in a multi-religious context in India today” and “World Peace multi-religious perspective”. But I was happy that I spoke to both of these, and specifically to our response as monks. I kept thinking of the Trappist monks of Tiburine too, the best example ever of the Third Good in modern times, when the Muslim villagers say to the monks, “We are the birds, you are the branches.”

 

And one more thing… during the Q&A I used a line about the US with them I have been using for many years––to be honest it refers to Newt Gringrich saying that “Palestine is an invented country", but that is only one such example: “A lot of powerful people in my country are saying some very ignorant things about other religions. And the problem is when somebody says something ignorant on this end, somebody on the other ends gets killed for it.” I hope Fr. Anthony will not wind up with blood on his hands from his inflammatory remarks yesterday—or anyone.

 

Oddly enough also (classic over-developed sense of duty), by this time I was the only one of the Western VIPs left: Abbot Primate, Abbot Bernard of AIM, and Sr Lynn of CIB were all gone by then. Most everyone else drifted off slowly in the afternoon and by evening prayer there were only two or three of us left. The last evenings I have been going for an hour of meditation in the Eucharistic chapel in the back of the church where mostly only the pre-postulants, postulants and novices go at 6:30 for “meditation time” before Vespers. Sitting on the floor with nice enough rugs. I’m sad that only these young guys go—and like at Shantivanam maybe only because they have to go—and only one or two of the elders, but I was really glad to have availed myself of that time with them. The young guys are so sweet. I only knew them from the concert and from hanging around at meals trying to learn their names, but they kept wanting to engage, and one of them wound up accompanying me to the airport at 11:30 PM. Now in Abu Dhabi waiting to board my flight home to Rome.

 

Let us come to a common word, shall we? God is love and those who abide in love abide in God––and God in them.

from bengaluru

 

15 feb 2025

 

Well, it’s time to start the new travelogue. First real trip of 2025 begins today. There have been a few little things in Italy (Bologna and Assisi), but they felt more like day trips. I had wanted to stay in Italy for a full three months and immerse myself in the language, settle into a routine and get to know the community at San Gregorio and the neighborhood, which I have been doing with a lot of pleasure. They have been full wonderful days, lots of “appointments” (though I try to never have more than one a day), and I usually walk to them to get to know the city better. (Clocking in about 5-7 miles a day.) A nice daily routine for meals and prayers with the brothers, who have been super. Lots of work at my desk, and my room winds up being a very fine office. Always something to do.

 

But my “boss” (I need to find another term for him), Abbot Primate Jeremias, suggested I come to India for this meeting and since it was the first thing he asked me to do and I am very devoted to  my Indian brothers and sisters, here I am on my way to the 50th anniversary meeting of the Indo-Sri Lankan Benedictine Confederation near Bengaluru, India. I just need to make an appearance on Monday, but Friday I am presiding and preaching at morning Mass, and then giving a full presentation on “Our Role and Response to Interreligious Dialogue.” I’ve worked really hard on the talk, hoping to use it for other gatherings, and of course writing always helps me clarify my own thoughts. But doing this in India is totally like preaching to the choir, though I hear that it is not foremost in a lot of people’s minds any more. I shall find out! I will make the talk available after I deliver it Friday. At least Dorathick and Pinto will be there from Shantivanam as well, and we are going to slip out on Thursday for a day visit with our old friend Jyoti Sahi.

 

I can now say that I have been to Saudi Arabia. The most economic ticket I could find was with Saudia Air, through Jeddah. I didn’t realize that Jeddah is so close to Mecca and is actually the arrival point for the hajj. I was very moved by the PA system and screens on the back of our seats playing an invocation before we took off, a prayer that the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) is reported to have said before every journey. And the entertainment offerings were interrupted regularly by announcements for the time for the next salat. About three hours into the four and a half hour flight I suddenly started to notice men dressed in white and sandals, and then I realized that there was a whole line of guys going to the bathroom in street clothes and then emerging a few minutes later draped in white. That included a rather sullen looking young man, maybe 18 years old max, sitting right across the aisle from me up one row, who disappeared into the bathroom with a shopping bag and then didn’t come out for like a half an hour. I was actually getting nervous. Later, as we were taking the transit bus from the plane to the terminal, I noticed him checking his reflection out satisfyingly in the window of the bus. I remembered Ram Dass’ reading of the Kabir poem, “I started wearing burlap \ but I still toss it elegantly over my shoulder” which I think of every time I put on the khavi robes in India.

 

Feb 17, from Asirvanam, Bengaluru

 

The second leg of the flight was a little rougher. I had a great seat in the bulkhead, with only two seats in the row and no one to my left. At first. But then, about an hour into the flight a very large man came and sat in the seat to my left, though “violating my air space” by a good bit with his legs and arms. I was trying to be polite and I think for the most part I succeeded. We took off at 2 AM, and for some reason they decided to serve a meal at about 4 AM. Negotiating balancing a meal on a little tray while squeezed into ¾ of my own seat was a little uncomfortable. And there was a lot of turbulence. The large gentleman also tried sitting on the floor in the bulkhead and got corrected by the steward. Then he sat in the steward’s own jump seat, and got corrected again. Eventually he got really lucky, and the steward, taking pity either on him or on himself, put him in a seat in business class. We landed a little early and everyone rushed to the front ASAP. Hard to describe it, but I was trying to negotiate a little space to get my things out of the overhead and I wound up cracking my head against the underside of the bins, which got several of my fellow passengers and the kindly steward very worried (I was bleeding from the scalp). He dug into his own carry-on a pulled a sanitary wipe out for me. Very sweet. I was rarely so relieved to get off a plane.

 

Another monk from Rome, an Indian who I had met two weeks back named Fr. Shoriaih, was arriving around the same time as I and was to arrange a taxi for us to Asirvanam. I got in about a half hour before him, and with all the passport check and baggage etc. he had to go through, I had about an hour to myself before he arrived. There was a nice little café and I treated myself to a masala chai, fresh squeezed orange juice and a big yummy granola bar, which was a nice respite. And then the long drive across town. I was just here a year ago and had already been shocked at how much growth there had been in the intervening 12 years or so since I had last come to Bangalore, but this time we drove from one end of the city to the extreme other side and it took us well over an hour. And I was in for another shock. I had been here to Asirvanam monastery some years ago (maybe 2006?) with George when he was prior of Shantivanam, but now I hardly recognized the place and was beginning doubt if I ever had been here after all. But I was assured it was the same place, but under the present prior, Fr Jerome, it has expanded exponentially. He apparently spent seven years at St John’s in Minnesota and I don’t think they were just kidding when the other monks said that he came home wanting to turn this place into  another Collegeville, and he has done it in the last decade. There is a school, the Benedictine Academy––and if I got this right it goes from grade school all the way to college. There as also two boys’ and girls’ hostels. I didn’t catch everything, but suffice it say it is thriving little town now.

 

As I mentioned this is a meeting of the Indo-Sri Lankan Benedictine Federation, as a matter of fact their 50th anniversary. It is mainly for the superiors but the first day was open to any and all comers. Our first event was over on the campus of the school. If you know anything about an Indian wedding––a huge production usually with a stage and lots of lights and music and ceremony––that was what the scene was like. It was also the annual cultural day for the academy, and we were the guests of honor. We sat in the front row of hundreds of people and those of us who were guests of honor were first called to stage by name to receive the traditional shawl and a large necklace. And then the show began. It was recorded music and live dance, highlighting various countries in the world, all performed by what looked to be for the most part grade school kids. Elaborate costumes and lots of choreography. They must have put in an enormous amount of work. The only problem was it was so loud. I know that Indians always have the music playing loud, often not even noticing that it is distorted in the speakers, but this was the loudest I have ever heard music––and I mean ever. And that includes many high powered rock concerts. I could barely hear out of my left ear afterward.

 

I am among the guests of honor, to my slight discomfort, as Secretary General of DIMMID, along with the abbot primate, the head of ISBF, the two abbot presidents who are here, Sr. Lynn who is the head of the women’s Benedictine confederation, the local prior, and Abbot Bernard of Belgium who is the head of AIM. That means I am often getting whisked up to places of honor (the head table in the refectory where one gets served), up on the dias at that event and then again this morning at our opening ceremony where more shawls and necklaces were given out, this time with the addition of a head piece and a commemorative desk piece (with my picture on it from 25 years ago). I am nowhere near tracking the names of all the nuns and monks and the various communities let alone the various congregations represented here. But almost everyone says, “You must come and visit.” They all of course know each other from this annual meeting but I am a bit of a fish out of water. After lunch there was a bus tour of some of Asirvanam’s other land holdings, and then we finally got down to business late this afternoon with a wonderful presentation by the Abbot Primate.

 

+Jeremias really is an impressive guy, with a command of languages, an ease in negotiating all kinds of public appearances he is called to make, and on top of that a clear and interesting speaker. He laid out a bit of what is going on in the confederation and then left us with something to dream about. There is going to be a jubilee year for the Benedictines in 2029, 1500 years. After his presentation he wanted us to talk a bit about it amongst ourselves––how to commemorate the anniversary but even more importantly, for my taste, to ask ourselves about what Benedictine monasticism has to offer the world. My thoughts went immediately––and I mean immediately––to “we have no idea what kind of world will be living in in three or four years.” The new administration is in the process of upending the global world order. How much more empowered will aggressive leaders be? How much more empowered will the so-called “far right” be? What will the world boundaries look like in 2029? Will there be an even greater struggle for the soul of Christianity than the one that is already heating up? (I sure hope so.) I told +Jeremias afterward that it feels like my own work in interreligious dialogue is all a part of that, tearing down walls, building bonds of friendship, educating and forming through encounters (and music).

spiegare…

2 January 25 (Got the year right on the first try!) Sadhana Mandir, Rishikesh

 

I can’t believe it’s been a month since I posted. Ah well. 

I’ve just finished a five day yoga retreat here, and have the better part of a day to my own devices before I fly out to Rome via Delhi tonight. I am gonna try to summarize and catch up.

 

After a nice long rest in Singapore at my new favorite (inexpensive) hotel in Singapore, I flew to Cochi, Kerala, India on December 8. Fr Dorathick and Shantivanam and I have both been a part of a project for our German sociologist friend Petra Ahrweiler for the past five years or so (pre-Covid) called AI Fora. It was (if I can summarize) launching conversations between people who work in AI doing up with algorithms for social services with the people who get left out of those algorithms, and using monasteries as “safe spaces” to hold those discussions. The experiments were done in China, India, Nigeria, the US, Germany and Spain. Because of all kinds of mitigating factors, we at the Hermitage never did have to actually host an event, but Petra liked Dorathick and me to stay on as advisors, especially since she is strongly influenced by Bede Griffiths. The other international meeting I attended was in 2021, in Germany and Italy, with the other monks and nuns involved. This time we were the only two monks. This was the first time I met most of the social scientists involved in the project. What a group, from the US (a prof at ASU, Tempe, AZ!), Spain, Iran, Nigeria, India (of course, who hosted), Germany, sociologists, researchers, statisticians, Computer Science professors, anthropologists. I was pretty much lost on the first day as they all gave the results of their research. It wasn’t until the second day that something clicked. That was actually the day that Dorathick and I were supposed to present from our perspective. I gave them my spiel about the evolution of consciousness and what I am now referring to as “deep practice” in environments where the words prayer and meditation may fall on rocky soil. It sparked a really fine discussion. And then that evening I gave a musical performance, which was also very well received. We were staying at a beautiful resort on a lake in Kerala, spoiled rotten with the food and comfort for three days. I got a little sick overnight the last day, low grade temperature and some stomach stuff, which lingered for a few days, but nothing serious.  I always seem to go through a bout of something like that here.

 

The best part of the stay was meeting this professor of Computer Science from Iran. We rode on the transport bus together and got to talking an about music, etc. He is officially a Muslim but really, he said, his religion is Rumi’s religion of love. He was reciting long poems for me in Persian from memory and then translating them, sometimes singing them, with his hands gesticulating in the air. Much to the amusement of the other participant passengers. We’ve stayed in touch and have been exchanging music and poems––his far more interesting than mine, as far as I am concerned.

Dorathick had driven himself and Petra from Shantivanam, about an 8 hour drive, over the Kumily Pass, which I had done 24 years ago on my first trip to India by bus with George Nellyanil and Roman, our Polish monk from Garda, by bus. It’s a beautiful drive through tea plantations, up to a high elevation and back down into Tamil Nadu. Well, Dorathick did not want to are the Kumily Pass because it had been raining heavily and he was afraid of rock slide which would have stranded us. So we took a road (trusting his GPS) that was lower in elevation but a little longer since it took us north and then dropped us back south. It didn’t work out that way. We didn’t take the Kumily Pass, but GPS still took us through the mountains at a little over elevation, through countless villages and up and down countless hills, narrow roads. We stopped about eight hours in for tea and a snack, but we didn’t get home until 3 AM. He did let me drive for a while, which I had never done on the left side of the road and the right side of the car. I did fine. I got use to the gears easily, the pedals are in the same position, it’s just that you shift with the left hand. Luckily is was very little driving in populated areas where we were at the time. He got nervous because he thought I was hugging the left side of the road too tightly––and maybe I did once in a while––but I thought I did great. And his driving makes me very nervous! So…

 

The time at Shantivanam went very quickly. I was asked to give the community a day of recollection, and to do some music, and also preach twice. There was also an old friend there who I have known for about 20 years, a former monk of St Andrew’s Abbey in Valyermo, though I knew him even before then and we had always had a great connection. He is now on a unique journey, working toward getting certified as a psychologist in Minnesota (he had been a school psychologist before religious life), but hoping to live a semi-eremitical life. He has now returned to his old love for India and the Vedanta. Very intelligent guy and well-schooled in both Indian and Roman theology. That led to amazing conversations, that neither one of us can often have with anybody. So that took up the first days. I also got inspired to work on a little writing project that I have been picking away at for this whole year and spent hours at the computer with that. Something about India always inspires me to write. (And, no, I will not say what it is… yet.) And having he privacy of a cell there at Shantivanam always makes me sink in really fast. I of course participated in all the community prayers, and especially the two hour-long meditations, one at 5:30 AM and the other at 6:00 PM. I had had a powerful experience with those earlier in February which kind of set me a a path for the year that stuck so I was happy to return to the place where it happened. Then came Christmas with all its crowds and festivities. Our old friend Michael Christian came down from Tiruvanamalai and we spent long hours together talking, since he could only be there one day. Along with him came Sherly, a former Camaldolese nun who I knew from when she was in Italy. She has been on her own now for quite a few years living in New Zealand, but she has been staying in Tiruvanamalai for a few months. She was hesitating about coming to Shantivanam until she found out I was going to be there, so we had a great reunion, again a few hours in conversation, comparing notes, joys and disappointments. I am very glad to be re-connected (and I have to connect her with our oblates in NZ, remind me).

 

And then I came up here. I had made a week retreat here in March, which again was a very good experience. It’s a small, clean, safe ashram right on the banks of the Ganges (right out my window). I had done a bit of their regular program when I was here last time (by requirement if it is your first time), but this time I wanted to make a private retreat, though I wanted to meet again with the Swami here, a woman sannyasi from Holland named Ma Tripura with whom I had had a good conversation last time. When I wrote ahead to see if there was a room available I also asked if she was available, and I was told that she was giving a Hatha yoga retreat the exact days that I wanted to come. I took that as a sign and signed up for the retreat too. I had no idea who demanding it was going to be, but I do not regret it. We met up to eight hours a day. There were twelve of us, half Indian and half Westerners. It was very much concentrated not on vinyasa, but on spinal alignment, all the things you can do to make sure your asanas are done safely aid in your seated posture. She kept saying that this tradition (the Himalayan Masters) was a meditative tradition, and they really do think of yoga as a science, available to all.  For my taste there was a little too much talking and focus on the body and not enough time in silence together but it may be what she sensed the crowed needed. The meditations were all guided, which I must admit was getting on my nerves. So part of my meditation was watching myself get annoyed, asking myself why, and trying to center in the midst of her speaking! Of course we could spend time on our own meditating too.

I had two other encounters here (in case I need to justify this stop for DIMMID––our write it off for taxes) besides another good long visit with Ma, who I would like to recruit as an interlocutor for us. One was through Meath in Australia who virtually introduced me to Siddhartha Radakrishna. He is the son of a very highly regarded and well known (in these parts) man named Surya Prakash, who was a Gandhian scholar and is referred to as Shri Prabhuji. Prabhuji married a Swiss woman, and they settled here. (His story goes on and on, and if I recount it here I will never stop.) She is an expert in Iyengar yoga. They established a family home on the West Bank of the Ganges right near the outskirts of town at the time, which eventually became a large yoga center. And now the whole town has grown around it. (Side note: Rishikesh is almost unrecognizable to me from the times I spent here. Very disappointing.) Meath just thought we should meet.  Siddhartha kindly drove across town a picked me at the ashram and then drove me back to their place––a 45-minute drive to go 6 kilometers through the crowded holiday traffic. Prabhuji left his body just last year. Siddhartha told me that in his whole life (he is in his mid-40s) he had only spent 14 days away from his father. His father raised him to be a pandit. He trained at the famous Kailash Ashram somewhat north of here and he has become an expert on the Upanishads, the Bhagavad Gita and the Yoga Sutras. He also seems to know a lot about Buddhism and Christianity. Needless to say, we had a marvelous long conversation over a very simple lunch with his mother. We parted both very grateful for the encounter and I do expect that we will meet again and again.

And then just yesterday I had a long visit with Swami Atmananda and his monks. He is another remarkable man that is hard to describe. Though he originally made vows as an eastern Christian monk, he came to India in the late 1980s in search of his true guru.  He has been here ever since. He is very dedicated to Abhishiktananda, and as a matter of fact served as the head of the Abhishiktananda Society until its dissolution, and is still in charge of Swamiji’s literary legacy. We had first met in 2007, and have corresponded a little (and been on a few online events) so we were both pretty happy about a chance to get together again. He has for some years now been running a sarva dharma ashram––“all dharmas” and has hosted many interfaith gatherings especially with Theravadan monks. He has a good group of monks living with him, a dozen or so, some training under him, mostly Indians, and has expanded the facility from a simple building to a four story complex with a gathering place for lectures, a beautiful meditation hall and a new enclosure. That part of town, Tapovan (which means the “forest (vanam) of austerities (tapas)” used to be hills populated with monks engaging in serious spiritual practice. It is now shockingly packed with hotels and resorts, claiming to be the “yoga capital of the world.” But their compound is a breath of fresh air, quiet and orderly. They walked down in a group to meet me where the taxi had left me off, and then when I walked in the compound I was greeted with such ceremony––a grand, a tilak, an arathi, young monks touching my feet, all quite jarring for me. I had met one of the members last time and he remembered me well, and was acting as a sort of dharma protector, making sure I didn’t fall going up the narrow steps to the roof, etc. Very touching. And of course Swamiji and I had a long conversation. How many times am I going to write “long conversation” in the next years? But that is my mandate: engaging in and promoting dialogue. And Swamiji is a wealth of information, certainly about the Indian tradition and Abhishiktananda. He has a great respect for the work of DIMMID (hence the ceremonial welcome) and I expect that we will be able to collaborate in the future.

I love the Italian word spiegare. It means “to explain” but its root is piegare, “to fold,” so to spiegare is to “unfold.” You spiegare a sail on a sailboat, for instance. And I keep saying that this new mission is spiegando, unfolding in front of me, revealing how it’s going to be and what I should do. I am consoled that I can count on a lot of old acquaintances as contacts and connections.

 

One interesting note: both Siddhartha, regarding his father, and Atmananda, regarding his swami, mentioned that they had read and cherished Thomas à Kempis’ Imitation of Christ. I read it too, years ago, but I must revisit it. It’s one of those works that Bede declared are “no longer useful” because of being tinged with so much dualism and the dark side of asceticism, if I recall correctly. What is there that is so attractive to these Indian holy men?

 

That’s all I am going to write about all that. I fly to Rome via Delhi this evening\tomorrow morning. It doesn’t feel hugely momentous, but a little poignant that the sabbatical year is officially over now and my new life based in Rome officially begins. I am looking forward to being back with the brothers at San Gregorio, I am really looking forward to being in my own room again (how quickly it has seared in my mind as “my cell!), and I am very excited about all the work ahead of me. There is a ton a things, to so at my desk in the near future and a load of official encounters as well, but it’s all good. I am so grateful.

 

So, two things I have noticed, and this too is where I feel as if there is a contribution to the greater discussion I can offer. People’s vocabulary around religion is not very good, to say it simply. For one thing, it is interesting to note how often I heard folks on this retreat subtly or not so subtly put down another tradition, a Theravadan practitioner putting down the Mahayana tradition, a Hindu putting down Muslims, and an Indian telling me he was going to write a book to explain the spiritual significance of the Bible to Christians (as if…?). That is assuming I am right and you are wrong. That obviously is not dialogue. I always assume first that the other person’s is a valid approach, and also assume that I don’t know someone else’s tradition well enough to speak about it, so I have something to learn. 

And secondly, it is notable (is it particularly in India?) how often people just assume that everyone accepts their broad beliefs and speaks about them as if they are established facts for everyone and to everyone––reincarnation, the world is an illusion, you are not your body, for example. If there is a space for a response, I find a way to say, “That is not how my tradition articulates that” or “That’s not my language for this” or “Not every tradition believes that, of course.” I suppose what I am realizing is that even people who think they are on an enlightened spiritual path still need to learn the language of dialogue, and even more, the humility of it. I have used my time tested telos and scopos explanation several time this last week, i.e., we do not articulate the ultimate end in the same way in our various traditions––reincarnation, the primacy of Jesus, etc.; but we seem to agree on the proximate goal––to go beyond the phenomenal self to whatever-that-is. And because we agree on that, we can also share praxis, the practices that lead to that goal. That’s our “common word.” A lot of education needed there, and I’m just the man to do it.

 

Horrifying to here about the violence of the New Year’s holiday in America, added to the ongoing atrocities in Ukraine and, especially, in the Gaza Strip. The world needs us to be… what? Whatever that is, let’s be it! I will if you will. As a matter of fact, I will even if you won’t, but I bet you will too.

 

More later from Rome. May all beings be well.